Writing Tip of the Day: Threesomes are Tricky…

Writing an article is like delving into a relationship. There is commitment instilled into each piece. Ideally, a writer works hard to learn about the piece,  researching and interviewing sources, collecting information and getting to the truth of the subject. They are eager to work with the article, finding out what works and what doesn’t. They expertly manipulate transitions until the article reaches new heights of writing ecstasy and when it’s really good they introduce the article to family and friends.

There are times when there is trouble in paradise: You’ve got an article to write and you make a date, taking time out of your very busy editorial calendar. Unfortunately, what should have been time spent alone, wrapped up in each other turns into frustrating series of starts, stops and half-hearted efforts. Your attention is elsewhere – you’re jumping up to look for the mailman or stopping to check your email, Twitter or Facebook when you should be with your article. The relationship suffers and instead of slowly taking the article to new heights, you “wham bam” it and while the goal (finishing the article) is accomplished, the experience is cold and unfulfilling.

Sound familiar?

Multitasking is an overused and over-celebrated phenomenon, especially when it comes to writing. Words and a writer are meant to go at it one-on-one and yet, many routinely praise and advocate incorporating a third party in the mix. Whether it’s social media, chores or other people, taking a couple to a threesome rarely works out for all parties. The article suffers, the writer suffers and it is easy to lose sight of what’s important – the process and experience of writing. Starting and stopping in the middle of a project makes for frustrating, slow going work. Give your piece the attention it deserves – take it out, turn off the email and Twitter alerts, let the phone go to voice mail and special thing you do with your fingers – type!

5 Ways to Know You’ve Written a Good Article

There are times when you have an article finished and you wonder if you’ve really done the piece justice. Here’s a few things to keep in mind:

5. It has great sources.

Great sources include leaders or well known folks in the field, interesting subjects that give a personal perspective to the piece or sources with something new to offer on an evergreen topic. Great sources have been vetted, they provide accurate information and there’s a demand for the information they are offer.

4. There are no holes.

All the questions have been answered – the ‘why’s’ and ‘why not’s’ researched and the ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘where’ and ‘when’ exposed. Attention has been paid to the audience and what they want to know.

3. It’s been thoroughly edited.

The editing process went beyond spell check. The article was allowed to marinate, then read aloud, printed out and double checked. It has been screened more than Dionne Warwick at the airport.

2. It has a killer lede (lead).

The kind of lead that stops you in your tracks and pulls you in like an ant at a cook out. The lede (lead) is catchy without being cliche, makes the reader think and stops the reader from turning the page.

1. You know it’s awesome.

Writers know when they’ve given an article their best. They know when a turn of phrase is magical or when an interview subject has just given the pull-out quote. It’s almost orgasmic when a piece or a lede seems to write itself, flowing from brain through fingers and out onto the computer screen. It is equally satisfying when an article is hard won. It’s a fight between the writer and the words and only one can win. The struggle to get every transition smooth, every bullet point packed with succinct information and finally, finally, victory. An article is good when there’s no need to see the score, you already know who won.

Quick Query Tip: Work Your Contacts

Writers tend to meet with, connect and befriend other writers. We build social networks and professional contacts that are both supportive and invaluable. These same contacts can be used to help get your foot in the door with editors and publications.

Now before you hustle off to pitch a magazine using the name of a Twitter friend who has also written for them,  you should know there is a fair amount of courtesy and responsibility that comes with using someone’s name to further your career.

The first thing you have to do is ask the person – seems obvious, but many people ignore this simple common courtesy.

Remember, before you ask permission, be sure you two actually have a relationship. Have you ever recommended a friend or family member for a job only for them to turn out to be a less than stellar or, at times, adequate worker? The same thing happens in writing.

An established writer can count on a couple of things: requests for hook-ups and advice. Advice is free to give as long as a person has time, but a hook-up costs. Many established writers are reluctant to allow their good name, one they’ve worked years to build, to be muddied with an editor because a writer-friend turned out to be a chronic deadline blower.

Part II of Work Your Contacts will discuss when and how to ask a friend for help and how to use their name to attract the attention of an editor.

Self Editing Tip #1: Distancing yourself from your work

Self editing is an important and often difficult part of writing. Distancing yourself from your own work can be especially tough. Think about it, you’ve poured over the subject, invested time, sweat and even, on occasion, tears into a piece and in the end you have to take a step back and go over ‘your baby’ with a critical eye.

Time It

You need time away from your piece to see it with your fresh editor eyes. I like to call this letting an article “marinate.” This marinating time gives you the opportunity to reset your brain and can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. You do need to schedule marinating time in accordance with your deadline. An editor is not going to want to hear about how your piece is late because it’s still in the sauce.

Print It

This isn’t the best ecological practice, but printing an article out will go a long way in making sure you catch any errors. It may sound old school, but there is really no substitute for a printed piece and a red pen. I find that longer articles benefit from this style of editing and shorter, blog-style pieces are less likely to need the stroke of the pen.

If the thought of printing out an article just for editing bothers your green sensibilities, simply reuse the paper for something else:

• add it to the shredder and turn it into packing paper for packages or gifts
• keep it on hand for kids drawings and doodles
• use both sides before tossing in the recycle bin

Robot It

No, I’m not asking you to bust out in your best robot dance routine while editing, though if you do put it on YouTube so I can laugh. I’m actually asking you to leave your emotions at the door. This is vital to editing especially when it comes to hitting your word count. As a writer you can become so  attached to your words that you can’t possibly find any place to trim your beautifully crafted work.

It is better for you to do the trimming than your editor because they don’t want to do it. I’ve gotten pretty darn resentful when a writer has sent in 500 words for a 300 word piece and expect me to whittle it down for them. It makes me think that they are either trying to get over, trying to get paid more than I budgeted or they are too lazy to be bothered. In any case I get cranky.

Imagine you’re a woodcarver and you have carved the most beautiful bench for a client. You deliver it proudly and when you see the piece at the homeowner’s housewarming party you’re horrified to find the client has hacked away at the legs with a handsaw because you failed to make the bench within the parameters they gave you. “But the legs were the best part!” you yell in horror. The client shrugs and mentions it just didn’t fit so they cut what they could. Edit to hit your word count so you have more control over what makes the publication.

Self editing requires distance in order to see your words as just words – words that need to be manipulated and perfected to the best of your ability.

How do you distance yourself from your work? Tell us below!

Stumped for Article Ideas? Query Your Friends!

It happens to all of us every once in a while. You need an idea for a column, blog or  article and you can’t quite seem to come up with an idea that grabs your interest. Sometimes normal sources of information just doesn’t cut it. Sometimes you gotta have friends.

Soliciting article advice from friends is a great way to put your social networking skills to good use. Tap your Twitter buddies and your Facebook friends to help you come up with the next, best idea for your work.

Make sure you tap your friends who are not writers, they often give the best ideas and angles for a story. These are people who aren’t tainted by the writing process and the burden of reading so much in a particular niche. It is also an exercise in digging for the story because most of the ideas thrown at you aren’t in query, blog, or article ready form. Turn a general “What about health care” suggestion into a working topic by asking questions about people’s concerns, local health care issues, or something germane to your niche or target audience.

“What about health care?” can breakdown into:

• Pet Insurance Do’s & Don’ts
• Finding coverage for children
• Local health care advocate news
• Health issues in your state, city, school
• Where your local Congressman stands on health care

The options are endless and I guarentee you’ll not only be able to gather great ideas from your friends, you’ll be able to find some pretty good sources among them as well.

Have you ever used a social networking site to gather ideas for an article? Tell us below.

Go Against Type & Type Up Creativity

A lot of us get caught up in our niches or types of writing. Blog posts, business writing, parenting writing and it can get a little tedious. Not to say you don’t enjoy what you do, just that every so often it feels good to do something against type. Your type.

It pays to stretch your writing muscles and get creative by experimenting with different writing genres. It may be just thing to juice up your writing in your specialty. For example, technical writers don’t have many opportunities to write humorous pieces or fictional fantasy pieces. You may suck at it in the beginning, but there are always things that can be learned by learning about a new style or area.

Venturing into other areas of writing doesn’t mean you have to be in it for paying gigs. I’m not talking about writing for free, you know how I feel about that – on rare occasions is it smart – I’m talking about freebie classes at bookstores, online courses or just writing for your own eyes.

The idea is to let your brain breathe, wander and stretch without the pressure of deadlines and electric bills affecting the work. If you find you really like it you can always jump into the paid world later.

I’ve got an interest in poetry, good poetry. Poetry that goes beyond the black-inked doom and gloom poems of my angst-ridden teenage years. Oh you know you have some too, don’t laugh – at least not too hard! It gives my brain the opportunity to play with words and phrases that move me emotionally – not necessarily something you’d get from an article on potty training. That brain stretching helps me turn words and phrases in more ways than before and that helps in every area of my work.

What areas of writing do you have a non-professional interest and what are you going to do about it? Tell us below!

Writing Tip of the Day: Maintain Your Cool

It’s easy to get overheated as a writer. You put your talent out there to be observed, reviewed and critiqued and sometimes the criticism is unfair, biased or just plain nasty.

Blog comments, editor’s remarks, reader mail – it all has the potential to give you a serious case of the grumps, but keeping your cool in the line of fire can make you a better writer.

Instead of blasting a rude blog comment, taking a deep breath and responding in a professional manner, if a response is warranted, will go a long way in establishing your reputation as a pro who can take the heat with grace.

Firing back at an editor can earn you a reputation as “hard to deal with” whether fair or not, engaging in positive, constructive conversation (at least on your end) will earn you respect and will help you and your editor reach common ground.

Think of it as a writing exercise – you want to say “Go to Hades you life sucking troll! You wouldn’t know good writing if it showed up sitting on your morning donut.” Now think of a creative, positive and constructive way to voice both your concern and willingness to seek common ground.

How do you handle criticsm? Share your thoughts with us!

Making Great Transitions in Articles

Writers traditionally get stuck in a couple places in their writing: in the beginning when they are trying to discover or develop their lead (lede), in the end when they are searching for just the right conclusion and at transition points throughout the article when they are tasked with introducing a new idea.

A good transition is like a listening to a great band or DJ. The music just flows from one song to another and all you notice is how good the music sounds. Bad transitions can feel like walking into a pole in the middle of a sidewalk. Jarred, the reader looks up and asks, “Where in the world did that come from?” as they stagger through the next set of ideas.

Transitions can be tricky and at times you need to look over the entire article to see where information fits and if you can rearrange information in a way that creates a better flow and easier transition. Ask yourself, “Where does the story/article naturally progress? What would a reader ask next?” Taking a moment to look at it from a reader’s perspective could be enough to illuminate the article’s pathway and make writing transitions easier.

One can choose to make transitions by using headers and bullet points. Some ideas will not flow naturally from one to the other and headers and bullet points are clear indicators that the article is going to move in another direction – a road map so to speak. Here is an article on using bullet points properly: “Bullets Make the Point.”

Quotes are another option for transitions. A good quote can be just what an article needs to introduce a new opinion, subject or direction. Remember, you don’t want to throw just any old quote in an article. The quote has to contribute to the article, give it a boost, a human voice, etc. “Say What?” A Quick Guide to Using Quotes” is a good place to explore how to pick and use quotes.

Got any transition tips? Have any questions? Write it below, I’d like to hear from you!

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Writing is Suffering

Why aren’t I getting gigs? Why am I caught in this niche I have grown to hate? Where’s my career going? There are a lot of reasons why a writer’s work suffers and some are so common most writers have or will experience them at some point. Do any of them ring a bell?

1. You’re bored. There are times a writer needs to switch course or look for new ways to stay passionate about an familiar topic.
2. You’ve gotten lazy. Let’s be honest, sometimes freelancers slack off and don’t feel like doing what they are supposed to do. I’ve been there and it’s tough to get back on task, but take a look at that electric bill – feel like writing now?
3. You’re not reading enough. The more you write, the more money you make right? The more work you have can take away from the other things that make a writer great, like reading other great writers. It’s amazing the amount of inspiration one well written piece can provide another writer.
4. You’ve got too much work. It sounds like a good problem to have, but in reality too many projects can take away from the time you have to devote to the perfection each project. The result? Sloppy or rushed work and not too much to show for it.
5. You’re burned out. When’s the last time you took a break? Switched up the routine a bit? If you’re still thinking, you may need a breather, a chance to go off the grid for a day or so and recharge. Time to refresh is not a privilege it’s a necessity.
6. You’re lonely. Online social networking is great and you can make some wonderful friends, but you also need to get out there and make friends in and out the writing field. You need your writing friends to commiserate and appreciate the life you lead and you need non-writing friends to give a different perspective. A writer’s life can be a lonely one and it can drive you bonkers, don’t let it happen to you.
7. You don’t have any support. Are you battling deadlines, kids, bills and the feeling no one really understands what you do? You are in need of support – it makes all the difference in the world. When someone’s in your corner it can help you get over those hump days and it’s important to have someone to share the good times. Nothing like calling up a friend to relay the news of a hot new gig knowing they are just as excited as you are about it.
8. You’re not enjoying yourself anymore. An important indicator of having a great job is when you love what you do.  You don’t have to love it all the time, there are days I’d like to throw my laptop and favorite pen out the window, but generally I get a whiz bang out of writing. Recapture that magic and it’ll show up in your work.
9. You’re not charging enough. Raise your hand if you ever worked your butt off for a piece only to get the check and decide it’s just not worth it? Ok, hands down. What’s going on with your fee schedule? Should you really charge more and does your work justify it? This great article from James will help you make what you’re worth.
10. You’re not doing what you really want to do. You became a freelancer so you could travel the globe, or your local playground, finding tips and trends in a fascinating field. Six months later you’ve got SEO and tech work coming out of your ears. You keep telling yourself it pays the bills, but really a corporate job would do just as well if that’s all you wanted. Time to check your goals and develop a plan to get back to your dreams.

Getting to the bottom of what ails your pen is not only great for your career, it’s great for your health. People who are passionate about what they do live fuller and longer lives. Let’s get you back to living yours.

Thursday’s post: “Inspirational Writers for Inspired Writing”

Got any great tips on a common writing threat/malady? Have you dealt with one of these and overcome? Share below!

Scheduling Time for Your Articles, Part 2

Yesterday we looked at scheduling time to research information, conduct interviews and prep an article in the first part of “Scheduling Time for Your Articles ” today we are going to wrap up this mini-series with a look at writing and editing.

• Schedule time to write the article. Once your preliminary work is complete it’s time to write. Short articles you may wrap up the initial draft in an hour or so, longer feature articles or more detailed subjects may take you anywhere from a couple hours to a couple of days. You should know your writing style by now so you are the only one who can plan out the time. I will caution you, however, to avoid spending an entire day on one piece. When something takes all day it is easy to get bored or frustrated with it. A couple of focused hours over the course of a couple of days tends to give writers a better perspective on where the piece is going. Which brings me to the next item:
• Schedule time to edit. “I edit as I write.” I hear that a lot when tutoring English students or students who are having trouble with papers in other classes. I usually respond “I can tell.” (Don’t worry, I am nice about it. Never crush a student’s writing confidence, it takes forever to get it back.) When you edit as you write you can end up with disjointed ideas, compromised flow and miss a gaggle of things you would have caught if you had gone back over the piece with your editing pen. Editing time is just as importing as writing and research time. I always advise students, writers, whomever, to take a day or two away from the piece. Give your brain a rest and then look at it with fresh eyes, you’ll have a much better idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Does the article writing process have to be a weeks-long odyssey? Absolutely not, but each step should be taken whether the step take 2 hours or 10 minutes. Giving the writing process time and diligence is what produces great writers, great articles and generates more income which is what we are all hoping for right? It also helps eliminate those pesky writing rodents “Procrastination” and “Missed Deadline.”

Do you break down the writing process differently? What works for you? Share it with your fellow writers below.

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